Today’s travels were to start with a quick visit up to the town of Leek a 20min walk from our mooring. We were expecting a small village but it ended up as a proper town in the full throttles of market day. Leek is a lovely town with its main street packed full of some good architecture and stuffed full of little stores all selling separate things as any good high should.
Our intended short stay lasted for about 3-4 hours as we were able to source a few things that we will need going forward. We got the dog tags bought and engraved them with the new UK phone numbers. This was a quaint process involving the pet store and engraver that just happened to have premises adjacent to each other. We then picked up a 2nd hand dog bed from the charity shop which we have put on the back of the boat under the tiller. It is used by Toque who sits there as we motor along in a very contented and comfortable fashion. Other purchases from the day included a homemade rhubarb pie and some lemon curd from what we think was the church ladies inside what is known as the butter market hall. We will test drive these purchases in the coming days.
The main thing that made our visit take so long is that we kept running into people who wanted to meet the dogs and say hello. They are certainly conversation starters and it is a nice way to meet people and get chatting and talking and chatting and on and on ……. We eventually got back to NB Lucy and got underway. Tracked back through the Leek tunnel where we came yesterday and then around the hair pin bend back onto the Caldon Canal and along to the small village of Cheddleton.
Found a mooring next to the old flint mill where there were two parallel water wheels that were used to grind the flint stones into flint which was then mixed with the clay and bone to make the world’s best pottery that this part of Staffordshire is so well known for.
On a little walk tonight we found the “Boat Inn” which was just lovely. Good beer too!
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